196 APPENDIX OF CASES. 
that “ lie does not remember to have performed the dissec 
tion of one lunatic during the last twenty-five years with 
out finding a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena 
observed during life,” If we glance back to the year 1831, 
when Dr. Andrew Combe published his work on mental 
derangement, we find this principle laid down:—“ Every 
derangement of function is accompanied by disorder either 
in the structure or mode of action of the organ which per 
forms it, and without the removal or cure of which the 
function cannot be restored to its healthy state.” The same 
author observes:—“ Sight is never impaired or hearing de 
stroyed unless the organs which execute these functions 
are diseased, and in like manner thought and feeling are 
never deranged unless the cerebral organs by which they 
are manifested have undergone some morbid change.” The 
latest expression of authoritative opinion upon this subject 
is by Dr. Maudesly, in his Gulstonian lectures, “on the 
relations between body and mind,” delivered this year at 
the Royal College of Physicians. That gentleman thus 
speaks:—-“I have given a survey of the physiology of 
our mental functions, showing how indissolubly they 
are bound up with the bodily functions, and how barren 
must of necessity bo a study of mind apart from body. I 
now propose to show that the phenomena of mental 
derangement bear out fully this view of its nature, that we 
have not to deal with disease of a metaphysical entity 
which the method of inductive inquiry cannot reach, or 
the resources of medical art touch, but with disease of 
the nervous system disclosing itself by physical and 
mental symptoms.” It seems then that the question in this 
case is concluded both by reasoning and medical testimony, 
and it appears to me that insanity is just as much bodily 
disease as paralysis and apoplexy, which are notoriously 
affections of the brain, and therefore admitted to be bodily 
disease. It has been suggested, I see, in the Lancet that in 
cases of insanity the right of relief out of the sick fund 
ought, on account of the usually chronic character of the 
malady, to be made subject to a special limit in point of 
time. * That matter I leave to others to whom its decision 
properly belongs. All that remains for me to do is to give 
effect to the conclusion to which, after much consideration, 
I have come, and to direct that a verdict be entered for the 
plaintiff for the sum claimed” («). 
(a) I am indebted to my friend Mr. W. U. Whitney, surgeon, 
for kindly revising the report of this decision, which originally- 
appeared in the Liverpool Mercury for 12th July, 1870.